Advantages:

The main advantages of XMPP is based on decentralization, its open standards, security and flexibility. As metioned one of the foremost advantages of using XMPP is that it is decentralized. this allows anyone to run their own XMPP server without the need of a central master server. This is very much similar to email. XMPP falls under open standards and it is formalized. Specifications have been published and the technology is not tied up with any single vendor which removes the need to pay any royalities. THe XMPP protocol has been used for a long time and companies like GOOGle has been supporting which ensures the development of libraries for clients, servers and other components. The servers running XMPP may be separated frfom public networks and it is secure as as security like SASLand TLS has been built into it. Channel encryption is supported by ensuring the availability of digital certificates. Another important feature that greatly enhances the desirabilty of XMPP is that it is flexible which implies customised functions can be built into it. This finds application in games, collaboration tools, file sharing and other features.

Disadvantages:

Large data overhead, limited  scope to scability and abscence of binary data are cited as the drawbacks of XMPP. Unmodified binary data cannot be delivered since XMPP is encoded as one long XML document.

However the advantages of XMPP greatly outweighs the drawbacks of XMPP.

Here is a simple architecture of XMPP and its working.

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